Dualism

General Information

Dualism is any theory or system of thought that recognizes two
and only two independent and mutually irreducible principles
or substances, which are sometimes complementary and sometimes
in conflict. Dualisms are distinguished from Monisms, which
admit only one element or kind of element, and from Pluralisms,
which admit more than two elements or kinds of elements. The
polarities of a dualism are distinguished from the thesis and
antithesis of a Dialectic, in that the former are stable and
mutually exclusive and the latter are dynamic, always tending
toward synthesis.

Dualisms are of two basic kinds, metaphysical and
epistemological. Metaphysical dualisms admit two substances,
such as world and God, or two principles, such as good and evil,
as a means of explaining the nature of reality. Descartes argued
a metaphysical dualism between mind - thinking substance - and
body - extended substance. He held that all elements of reality
are ultimately one or the other of these two heterogeneous
substances. Epistemological dualisms use two substances or
principles, such as consciousness and phenomena or subject and
object, to analyze the knowing process. In general, an
epistemological dualist distinguishes that which is immediately
present to the perceiving mind from the retrospective determination
of the real object known.

Plato's being and becoming, Aristotle's form and matter, Kant's
noumena and phenomena, yin and yang in Chinese philosophy and
the traditional issues of God and man, space and time, and
nature and nurture are among other famous dualisms.

Donald Gotterbarn

Bibliography
A O Lovejoy, The Revolt Against Dualism (1930).

Dualism

Advanced Information

Dualism is
a theory in interpretation which explains a given situation or
domain in terms of two opposing factors or principles. In general,
dualisms are twofold classifications which admit of no intermediate
degrees. There are three major types: metaphysical, epistemological
or epistemic, and ethical or ethicoreligious.

Metaphysical dualism asserts that the facts of the universe are best
explained in terms of mutually irreducible elements. These are often
considered to be mind and matter, or as by Descartes, thought and
extension. Mind is usually conceived as conscious experience, matter
as occupying space and being in motion. They are thus two
qualitatively different orders of reality.

Epistemological dualism is an analysis of the knowing situation
which holds that the idea or object of judgment is radically other
than the real object. The "object" of knowledge is held to be known
only through the mediation of "ideas." This type of thinking raises
the important question of the manner in which knowledge can bridge
the gap between the idea of an object and the object itself.

Ethical or ethicoreligious dualism asserts that there are two
mutually hostile forces or beings in the world, the one being the
source of all good, the other the source of all evil. The most
clear cut type of ethicoreligious dualism is that of the ancient
Iranian religion, usually associated with the name of Zoroaster,
in which Ahura Mazda and Ahriman represent the projection into
cosmology, respectively, of the forces of good and evil. The
universe becomes the battleground for these opposing beings,
identified respectively with light and darkness. More moderate
forms of dualism pervade most religions, expressed, for example,
by the distinction between sacred and profane, or by the analysis
of reality in terms of yang and yin in Chinese thought.

Christian theology generally accepts a modified moral dualism,
recognizing God as supremely good and Satan as a deteriorated
creature bent everywhere upon the intrusion of evil. This, however,
is not dualism in the sense of its usual definition, since
Christian theology does not consider Satan to be ultimate or
original, and sees him ultimately excluded from the universe.

H B Kuhn
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)

Bibliography
D Runes, Dictionary of Philosophy.

Dualism

Catholic Information

(From Latin duo, two).

Like most other philosophical terms, has been employed in different meanings by
different schools.

First, the name has been used to denote the religious or theological system
which would explain the universe as the outcome of two eternally opposed and
coexisting principles, conceived as good and evil, light and darkness, or some
other form of conflicting powers. We find this theory widely prevalent in the
East, and especially in Persia, for several centuries before the Christian Era.
The Zend-Avesta, ascribed to Zoroaster, who probably lived in the sixth century
B.C. and is supposed to be the founder or reformer of the Medo-Persian religion,
explains the world as the outcome of the struggle between Ormuzd and Ahriman.
Ormuzd is infinite light, supreme wisdom, and the author of all good; Ahriman is
the principle of darkness and of all evil. In the third century after Christ,
Manes, for a time a convert to Christianity, developed a form of Gnosticism,
subsequently styled Manichaeism, in which he sought to fuse some of the elements
of the Christian religion with the dualistic creed of Zoroastrianism (see
MANICHAEISM and ZOROASTER). Christian philosophy, expounded with minor
differences by theologians and philosophers from St. Augustine downwards, holds
generally that physical evil is the result of the necessary limitations of
finite created beings, and that moral evil, which alone is evil in the true
sense, is a consequence of the creation of beings possessed of free wills and is
tolerated by God. Both physical and moral evil are to be conceived as some form
of privation or defect of being, not as positive entity. Their existence is thus
not irreconcilable with the doctrine of theistic monism.

Second, the term dualism is employed in opposition to monism, to signify the
ordinary view that the existing universe contains two radically distinct kinds
of being or substance -- matter and spirit, body and mind. This is the most
frequent use of the name in modern philosophy, where it is commonly contrasted
with monism. But it should not be forgotten that dualism in this sense is quite
reconcilable with a monistic origin of all things. The theistic doctrine of
creation gives a monistic account of the universe in this sense. Dualism is thus
opposed to both materialism and idealism. Idealism, however, of the Berkeleyan
type, which maintains the existence of a multitude of distinct substantial
minds, may along with dualism, be described as pluralism.

Historically, in Greek philosophy as early as 500 B.C. we find the Eleatic
School with Parmenides as their chief, teaching a universal unity of being, thus
exhibiting a certain affinity with modern German monism. Being alone exists. It
is absolutely one, eternal, and unchangeable. There is no real becoming or
beginning of being. Seeming changes and plurality of beings are mere
appearances. To this unity of being, Plato opposed an original duality--God and
unproduced matter, existing side by side from all eternity. This matter,
however, was conceived as indeterminate, chaotic, fluctuating, and governed by a
blind necessity, in contrast with mind which acts according to plan. The order
and arrangement are due to God. Evil and disorder in the world have their source
in the resistance of matter which God has not altogether vanquished. Here we
seem to have a trace of the Oriental speculation. Again there is another dualism
in man. The rational soul is a spiritual substance distinct from the body within
which it dwells, somewhat as the charioteer in the chariot. Aristotle is
dualistic on sundry important topics. The contrast between the fundamental
conceptions of matter and form--a potential and an actualizing principle--runs
through all branches of his system. Necessarily coeternal with God, Who is pure
actuality, there has existed the passive principle of matter, which in this
sense, however, is mere potentiality. But further, along with God Who is the
Prime Mover, there must also have existed from all eternity the World moved by
God. In his treatment of cognition Aristotle adopts the ordinary common-sense
view of the existence of individual objects distinct from our perceptions and
ideas of them. Man is an individual substantial being resulting from the
coalescence of the two principles--form (the soul) and matter.

Christianity rejected all forms of a dual origin of the world which erected
matter, or evil, or any other principle into a second eternal being coexistent
with God, and it taught the monistic origin of the universe from one, infinite,
self-existing spiritual Being who freely created all things. The unfamiliar
conception of free creation, however, met with considerable opposition in the
schools of philosophy and was abandoned by several of the earlier heresies. The
neo-Platonists sought to lessen the difficulty by emanastic forms of pantheism,
and also by inserting intermediate beings between God and the world. But the
former method implied a materialistic conception of God, while the latter only
postponed the difficulty. From the thirteenth century, through the influence of
Albertus Magnus and still more of St. Thomas Aquinas, the philosophy of
Aristotle, though subjected to some important modifications, became the
accredited philosophy of the Church. The dualistic hypothesis of an eternal
world existing side by side with God was of course rejected. But the conception
of spiritual beings as opposed to matter received fuller definition and
development. The distinction between the human soul and the body which it
animates was made clearer and their separability emphasized; but the
ultra-dualism of Plato was avoided by insisting on the intimate union of soul
and body to constitute one substantial being under the conception of form and
matter.

The problem of dualism, however, was lifted into quite a new position in modern
philosophy by Descartes. Indeed, since his time it has been a topic of central
interest in philosophical speculation. His handling of two distinct questions,
the one epistemological, the other metaphysical, brought this about. The mind
stands in a cognitional relation to the external world, and in a causal relation
to the changes within the body. What is the precise nature of each of these
relations? According to Descartes the soul is res cogitans. Its essence is
thought. It is simple and unextended. It has nothing in common with the body,
but is connected with it in a single point, the pineal gland in the centre of
the brain. In contrast with this, the essence of matter lies in extension. So
the two forms of being are utterly disparate. Consequently the union between
them is of an accidental or extrinsic character. Descartes thus approximates to
the Platonic conception of charioteer and chariot. Soul and body are really two
merely allied beings. How then do they interact? Real reciprocal influence or
causal interaction seems impossible between two such disparate things. Geulincx
and other disciples of Descartes were driven to invent the hypothesis of
occasionalism and Divine assistance, according to which it is God Himself who
effects the appropriate change in either body or mind on the occasion of the
corresponding change in the other. For this system of miraculous interferences
Leibniz substituted the theory of pre-established harmony according to which God
has coupled pairs of bodies and souls which are destined to run in parallel
series of changes like two clocks started together. The same insoluble
difficulty of psycho-physical parallelism remains on the hands of those
psychologists and philosophers at the present day who reject the doctrine of the
soul as a real being capable of acting on the body which it informs. The
ultra-dualism of Descartes was immediately followed on the Continent by the
pantheistic monism of Spinoza, which identified mind and matter in one infinite
substance of which they are merely "modes."

The cognitional question Descartes solves by a theory of knowledge according to
which the mind immediately perceives only its own ideas or modifications. The
belief in an external world corresponding to these ideas is of the nature of an
inference, and the guaranteeing of this inference or the construction of a
reliable bridge from the subjective world of thought to the objective world of
material being, was thenceforth the main problem of modern philosophy. Locke
similarly taught that the mind immediately apprehends only its own ideas, but he
assumed a real external world which corresponds to these ideas, at least as
regards the primary qualities of matter. Berkeley, accepting Locke's assumption
that the mind immediately cognizes only its own ideas, raised the question: What
grounds have we for believing in the existence of a material world corresponding
to those ideas? He concludes that there are none. The external cause of these
ideas is God Who awakens them in our minds by regular laws. The dualistic
opposition between mind and matter is thus got rid of by denying an independent
material world. But Berkeley still postulates multitude of real substantial
minds distinct from each other and apparently from God. We have thus idealistic
pluralism. Hume carried Berkeley's scepticism a step farther and denied the
existence of permanent spiritual substances, or minds, for grounds similar to
those on which Berkeley rejected material substances. All we know to exist are
ideas of greater or less vividness. Kant repudiates this more extreme scepticism
and adopts, at least in the second edition of his chief work, a form of dualism
based on the distinction of phenomena and noumena. The mind immediately
perceives only its own representations. These are modified by innate mental
forms. They present to us only phenomena. But the noumena, the
things-in-themselves, the external causes of these phenomenal representations,
are beyond our power of cognition. Fichte rejected things-in-themselves outside
the mind, and reduced the Kantian dualism to idealistic monism. The strongest
and most consistent defenders of dualism in modern philosophy have been the
Scotch School, including Reid, Stuart, and Hamilton. Among English writers in
more recent times Martineau, McCosh, Mivart, and Case have carried on the same
tradition on similar lines.

The problem of dualism, as its history suggests, involves two main questions:

Does there exist a material world outside of our minds and independent of our
thought?

Supposing such a world to exist, how does the mind attain to the cognition of
it?

The former question belongs to epistemology, material logic, or general
philosophy; the latter to psychology. It is true that dualism is ultimately
rejected by the materialist who reduces conscious states to functions, or
"aspects" of the brain; but objections from this standpoint will be more
suitably dealt with under materialism and monism. The idealist theory since
Berkeley, in all its forms, maintains that the mind can only know its own states
or representations, and that what we suppose to be an independent, material
world is, in the last analysis, only a series of ideas and sensations plus
belief in the possibility of other sensations. Our conviction of the objective
reality of a vivid consistent dream is analogous to our conviction of the
validity of our waking experience. Dualism affirms, in opposition to all forms
of idealism, the independent, extramental reality of the material world. Among
its chief arguments are the following:

Our belief in the existence of other minds is an inference from their bodies.
Consequently the denial of an external material world involves the rejection
of all evidence for the existence of other minds, and lands the idealist in
the position of "Solipsism".

Physical science assumes the existence of a material world, existing when
unperceived, possessing various properties, and exerting various powers
according to definite constant laws. Thus astronomy describes the movements of
heavenly bodies moving in space of three dimensions, attracting each other
with forces inversely proportioned to the square of the distance. It
postulates the movement and action of such bodies when they are invisible as
well as when they are visible through long periods of time and over vast areas
of space. From these assumptions it deduces future positions and foretells
eclipses and transits many years ahead. Observations carried out by subsequent
generations verify the predictions. Were there not an extramental world whose
parts exist and act in a space and time truly mirrored by our cognitions and
ideas, such a result would be impossible. The branches of science dealing with
sound, light, heat, and electricity are equally irreconcilable with idealism.
The teachings of physiology and psycho-physics become peculiarly absurd in the
idealist theory. What, for instance, is meant by saying that memory is
dependent on modifications in the nervous substance of the brain, if all the
material world, including the brain, is but a collection of mental states?
Psychology similarly assumes the extramental reality of the human body in its
account of the growth of the senses and the development of perception. Were
the idealist hypothesis true its language would be meaningless. All branches
of science thus presuppose and confirm the dualistic view of common sense.

Granted, then, the truth of dualism, the psychological question emerges: How
does the mind come to know the material world? Broadly speaking there are two
answers. According to one the mind immediately perceives only its own
representations or ideas and from these it infers external material objects as
the cause of these ideas. According to the other, in some of its acts it
immediately perceives extended objects or part of the material world. As
Hamilton says: "What we directly apprehend is the Non-ego, not some modification
of the Ego". The theory which maintains an immediate perception of the non-ego
he calls natural dualism or natural realism. The other, which holds a mediate
cognition of the non-ego, as the inferred cause of a representation immediately
apprehended, he terms hypothetical dualism or hypothetical realism. The doctrine
of immediate or presentative perception is that adopted by the great body of
Scholastic philosophers and is embodied in the dictum that the idea, concept, or
mental act of apprehension is non id quod percipitur sed medium quo res
percipitur -- not that which is perceived but the medium by which the object
itself is perceived. This seems to be the only account of the nature of
knowledge that does not lead logically to idealism; and the history of the
subject confirms this view. But affirmation of the mind's capacity for immediate
perception of the non-ego and insistence on the distinction between id quod and
id quo percipitur, do not dispose of the whole difficulty. Modern psychology has
become genetic. Its interest centres in tracing the growth and development of
cognition from the simplest and most elementary sensations of infancy. Analysis
of the perceptive processes of a later age, e.g. apprehension of size, shape,
solidity, distance, and other qualities of remote objects, proves that
operations seemingly instantaneous and immediate may involve the activity of
memory, imagination, judgment, reasoning, and subconscious contributions from
the past experience of other senses. There is thus much that is indirect and
inferential in nearly all the percipient acts of mature life. This should be
frankly admitted by the defender of natural dualism, and the chief psychological
problem for him at the present day is to sift and discriminate what is immediate
and direct from what is mediate or representative in the admittedly complex
cognitional operations of normal adult life.

Publication information
Written by Michael Maher. Transcribed by Robert H. Sarkissian.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume V. Published 1909. New York: Robert Appleton
Company. Nihil Obstat, May 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, Censor. Imprimatur. +John M.
Farley, Archbishop of New York